Frugal Friday: Money Saving Weekly Recap

 Yeah, I know, this is really late.  It's been really busy around here.  Not in a good way, but busy.

First up there was all the medical stuff.  I've been doing stretches that my chiropractor recommended and taking my medications as needed, but one day my back had just like had enough or something a few weeks back.  I had a spasm in my lower back while I was standing up and cooking dinner and suddenly my right leg just went dead.  Not numb, not tingly,  just dead.  It was a rough weekend as I had to think about where I was going to move before I moved so that I could put my right leg forcefully where it needed to go.  Walking like that is kind of difficult, I have to say.  I started getting intermittent feeling back in my leg and then it would randomly go dead after that.  Monday rolled around and I ended up going to the doctor where I acquired a few new prescriptions for a muscle relaxant and a course of steroids to relieve any internal swelling in my back.  I also ended up with some referrals.  And so it was off for a MRI on my back the next day, which was a fun experience.  Got the results of the MRI back the day after that and found out that it was completely normal and the doctor had no idea what was causing my back problems.  

So, it was then a referral to physical therapy and this time?  This time I went.  Mainly out of desperation to see if someone could help me get my back to cooperate again or even tell me what in the Heck was wrong with it.  Despite the estimated 225.00 per visit price tag attached to it, I wanted to give it a shot.

So, my physical therapy eval was Friday and I'm going to go once a week for a month to see if I can get my back working right again.  The physical therapist thinks that at some pint in the past I probably injured my back, worked through it and ended up getting an uneven musculature and stuff from it, which has progressively led to the problems I'm having now.  It makes sense, really.  I have exercises to do every day and I'm religiously doing them, so hopefully this will work.  I'm praying as I can't afford an appointment once a month, let alone once a week, so I'm determined this is going to work one way or the other.

The cost of the MRI and the physical therapy is definitely going to max out my deductible for this year, so meeting that deductible is going to put me in some nasty debt.  I just pray it is worth it in the end.  Between that and the worldwide economy...finances are pretty freaking terrifying right now and I know I'm far from alone in that area right now.

By the way folks, side note here, I just wanted to let you know that if you stop by and wonder why you aren't getting e-mail updates on the blog, it is because feedburner (the guys who used to do my e-mail updates) aren't doing that anymore.  If you would like an e-mail letting you know when I update, please e-mail me at makedohomemaker (at) gmail (dot) com and I'll try and get an e-mail list up and get that e-mail off to you folks in a timely manner.  Sorry about not letting you know about this sooner.  Honestly, I spaced it with everything life has thrown at me the last few months.

With the state of everything in the world, I got an e-mail from one of my readers asking if maybe I could share some extreme hard times recipes and skills that people might need.  I am totally willing to do that.  I'm going to try and see if I can dig out my great depression, WWII rationing and other recipes and I'll try and share those on here as well as maybe some more tutorials on how to darn different items and things.  At this point I'm figuring this is something people can probably use, or if nothing else find inspiration from, so I'm going to make a point to do that.  If I can help at least a few people, I'll feel it was completely worth it.

Right, so let's get to money saving things that have happened the last bit.

1.  We went to the Fall Festival Special Needs Edition again this year.  Unfortunately, winter decided it wanted to come early that day so it was sleeting, snowing, raining and COLD.  The kids still had a blast, but man, it was cold.  We made it an hour and half and then went home.  My mother-in-law went with us.  It was fun.  Just cold, wet and short *laugh*.  I got no pictures this year because of those factors as all I got was photos of rain drops and blurry things in the background.

2.  I found out that we are getting a PFD this year and how much, and when, it was going to be.  I talked to my husband about shortages and all and we both decided that if we wanted to stock up on food and things we'd best to it now before price increases kicked in or, worse yet, before things weren't available at all.  So, we went an put groceries on the credit card over the weekend and will hopefully pay the credit card back down when PFDs come in.  I'm glad we did it, honestly, as much as I hated to put money on the credit card, because when PFDs come in it is really typical for Alaskans to go and stock up on food for the winter (really it is one of the few times of year that Alaskans tend to have a decent amount of income at their disposal to do it).  Food is already kind of thin at the stores right now, so one good PFD run on the stores and we could be looking at some pretty nasty empty shelves for a while. 

One thing people who aren't from here don't get, but quickly learn when they move here, is that we are pretty much the end of the line when it comes to the supply chain.  Anything that stores can't really sell in other places they throw on a plane to Alaska and figure that Alaskans will buy it.  For instance Fred Meyers in our local area were selling 1 gallon jugs of mayonnaise a bit ago for 1.00 a pop, but you had to buy a minimum of 10 to get that price, as the local stores had ordered quart jars and stuff like normal, but had gotten shipped gallon sized jugs of the stuff that Fred Meyer couldn't ship to other places and we got stuck with it.  We are used to things like that up here.  On top of that our cost of living up here is high just because of where we are, so we are seeing price increases hard up here.  My jaw dropped when I saw that bulk packages of hot dogs had gone up 4.00 since I bought them a few months ago and a lot of items had gone up at least 1.00 per item.  When you ship things as far as Alaska, we get hit hard by shipping costs being added onto items up here and when fuel pries start increasing?  You'll see prices go up exponentially hard and fast.  

I'm not saying Alaskans are panic buying or anything, but I think a lot of Alaskans are just going to go out like normal and buy groceries and when, and if, we are going to see those items come back in stock is debatable.

I was kind of impressed in a way that a lot of staple goods, especially beans and rice, were pretty much gone from Three Bears when we went shopping and PFDs aren't even in yet.  I was able to get more expensive medium grain rice, which was okay since we like to buy that kind anyway, but that was the only rice they even had left on the shelf, so I'm glad we like that type.  Things like cooking oil, vinegar and other staples were getting kind of thin as well, so I was very glad we were able to find what we did and get it while we still could.  It is looking like it is going to be a really rough winter, so I'm doing my best to prepare and fill holes, even ones I didn't think about, to see us through this mess as well as I'm able.  I'll be sharing some of my more odd, thinking outside the box, things I'm doing as well, so you can either maybe get inspired by it or think I'm crazy and laugh hysterically at me.  I'm okay with it either way.

3.  When it came to regular grocery shopping the last few weeks, Carrs gave me a bunch of bonus rewards every shopping trip and also I ended up with a coupon for a free 10 lb bag of potatoes!  So, I definitely took advantage of the free potatoes :).

I also redeemed some gas rewards for...

A free rotisserie chicken (which I then used to make a casserole, which then lasted us many meals during the week.

I then redeemed some more in the next couple of weeks and got...

A thing of frozen raviolli

A box of frozen soft pretzels

Two cans of green beans (I actually redeemed the reward for "two cans of vegetables" and thought I'd be able to get something more interesting, but green beans was all Carrs had that day, so that is what I got.

A free quart of vegetable broth (I bought three more so I'd have enough to brine the turkey at Thanksgiving).

A free bag of tater tots (for tater tot casserole was the original intent...we'll see if that is what I use it for :).

4.  I mended a couple of pair of pants for the son.

5.  I really tried hard to make sure we did have things to eat around here even when my back was really bad.  I was decently successful, which made me feel good that we at least didn't have to spend money on that.

6.  I put potential Christmas gifts for the kids in my cart on Amazon and waited until I could get prices I was happy about before I ordered said items.  It definitely saved money doing it that way.

In other news, Christmas this year isn't going to be terribly exciting when it comes to gifts, but I ordered things that we needed (new sheets for each of the kids, some new shirts for the daughter, new PJ's for the son) and a few things for fun (books and a few art supplies for the daughter, some sensory toys for the son), but yeah, this year is going to definitely be more geared toward "personalized needs so the items feel special, but definitely needs" type of gifts.  The budget stretches that far, but it is going to be tight just with medical bills let alone what else might be coming down the pike.

7.  One of the things that my daughter did at the Fall Festival was they had a booth where you could paint a pumpkin.  She picked a pumpkin and did a fun Halloween design on it and then, after we got home, I checked the sticker on the pumpkin and found we had received a free pie pumpkin.  That was a cool score.  So far the pumpkin is still hanging in there and not showing signs of going bad, so hopefully it might last till Halloween.  We shall see :).  No matter what it is future pumpkin puree for the freezer.

8.  I have gotten really good about making bread once a week so that we have fresh bread all week long to eat with dinner and to eat as toast (the daughter loves that way of eating it).  

9.  We watched some free on Prime videos the last couple of weeks that were more Halloween themed.

And there you go folks.  I'm going to call it good there mainly because I've been writing this post on and of all day and I'm going blurry eyed.  I hope you are all hanging in there and things aren't too hard on your end.